


Self-Medicating

by Outside_Context_Problem



Series: The Troll War [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: And Fate, Archaeology 101 time, Death, F/M, Grimdark Dave, I sold my soul to the horrorterrors and all I got were these lousy time powers, Revealing my fanon on troll blood castes, Time - Freeform, life - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-03
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:52:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Outside_Context_Problem/pseuds/Outside_Context_Problem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Treatment Log, Fleming Station<br/>Patient: Dave Strider. Species malfunction, temporal disjunction, overwhelming desperation.</p><p>Patient: Aradia Megido. Unavoidable fatal genetic flaw.</p><p>Occurs during Progression, between Chapters 7-8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Patient: Dave Strider

Of all the improvements in medical technology over the last five hundred years or so, you think the flat-out winner is the messuit (Medical Evaluation Suite), a skin-tight, peel-back material, needle-penetrable jumpsuit with a host of sensors built into it.

Mostly, you think this because John has roped you into watching so goddamn many old-ass 20th century movies, and you could not handle those hospital gowns.

Even Dave Strider can only do so much with his ass hanging out.

You appreciate the rest, too - like the messuit's external skeletal structure that lets you get in some physical therapy and injects you with enough lovely, lovely chemicals to make said therapy a chore rather than agony.

Still, some things never change. You don't sigh when the doctor stands in the doorway looking soberly at you (hah!), although your mouth tightens from "inked in" to "pencil line". And of course, you have to speak first. Even if she wasn't going to make you as part of the usual games, it's pretty important.

"If I had my clearance back, I could access every single file you have on her treatment, you know. But of course HCI won't revert me to "living" status until you discharge me. You suck, doc."

She frowns and raises an eyebrow. Aw, christ, really, you have to do this too?

"Fine. You suck, _Mom_."

"You always were a smart-alec, Dave."

"In _our_ quasi-family? How the fuck could you tell? And you were always the _smart_ one, Roxy. So, please tell me: what fucking species am I?" You wave a grey-skinned, soft human arm (well, not that soft, you work out, you're just not carrying a rhino's hide any more) and point at your face - no horns, red eyes, red bloodshot in fact because you're a little stressed, and hair gone from trollish black back to your natural light blonde and then through that into anime protagonist white (god, sometimes you really hate John's taste in entertainment and _what it has done to you_ ).

"You're genetically back to normal. Physically too, we didn't even have to go in and root out all those weird organs. Plus, I'm sure you checked first thing, your junk's back to normal."

"That was comforting, yeah, but I'm still a fucking monochrome, can we maybe advance the tech to color me in?"

"Nope! Because we have no idea _why_ , Dave. There is no genetic or endemic reason for your colors. It just looks like the Furthest Ring left its mark on you. What'd I tell you about taking your dates to alien dimensions without protection? Honestly, the things Dirk lets you get up to."

>   
> 
> 
> _You sense him in that place without time and being, in the den where you've hid her from reality, you see his trail pass you twice._  
> 

>   
>  _No. Not twice. A thousand times, an incalculable number that stretches greater and smaller with your observations. But those two are bright and fresh in the not-yet. Out of time, you can see him coming._   
> 

>   
> _And then, how hard is it to reach out, on the second pass, to_ **touch** _and instill time where there is no time? To give motion to one man?_

>   
>  _Trivial. Because they've told you how, because the patient whispers and dark lullabies from a thousand silent mouths have been instructing you since before time began._   
> 

>   
>  _So you give him time, because if you have time to spare for anyone it's him._   
> 

>   
>  _John._   
> 

>   
>  _"Dave?"_   
> 

>   
>  _"Hey, Egbert."_   
> 

>   
>  _"Seriously, you are my Dave right? I'm not trying to collapse angry waveforms the wrong way but I'm at least 90 percent sure this place is a nexus of all potential externalities past, present, and future, so I figured I'd better check."_   
> 

>   
>  _You still know how to smile. Not the smirk, that's easy, a mere twitch of practiced muscles. But the open, stunned, goofier-than-him smile. "It's me, John. We grew up in the same gene-kid group home, you go nuts when somebody bites your neck during sex, we got shot down on a mercurial ice-world together and kicked its ass, and no matter what you're perceiving me as right now, I left in the body of a troll with Karkat thanks to HCI. Dave Strider, the one and only. Accept no imitations."_   
> 

>   
>  _He's going to say it. He has to say it. You perceive him suited in Terrafleet black-and-white, but you don't need to see his face to know what it looks like now. "I missed you, man."_   
> 

>   
>  _"Not this time, John. You found my ass."_   
> 

>   
>  _He hesitates, his hand a fraction of infinity away from your shoulder. "Can you… come with me?"_   
> 

>   
>  _You let the smile become the smirk. Because this shit you can get boastful about with your buddy. "Shit, John, I wouldn't make any bargains to live at the cost of being trapped here. Do you think I turn into some kind of a chump when you're not with me?"_   
> 

>   
>  _John is grinning his ass off, you just know it. "No, you just shed the "what's in it for me" cynicism and go straight out suicidal hero, according to Karkat."_   
> 

>   
>  _"Eh, what does Vantas know? I'm still alive, so it couldn't have been that suicidal."_   
> 

>   
>  _He touches you. "You can leave this time-place-reality-whatever, right? Then let's go."_   
> 

>   
>  _You nod, but first you have to look at the only reason you're here, the only person responsible for the Legend of Dave Strider not ending in a ship-ramming  core-detonating blaze of glory._   
> 

>   
>  _She hasn't said anything, or moved, save for the slightest hint of breath now and only now that you've brought Time to the Furthest Ring._   
> 

>   
>  _She's alive. You will make sure of that whatever it costs you._   
> 

>   
> _You_ **IMPOSE** _time/position/relation on the ship he brought here (not it brought him. Don't be ridiculous. John is the 400kg gorilla of fate). It's sharp - crisp, reflective surfaces, with the angular plating and design you saw the primitive ancestors of in Coalition broadcasts while you were being trollified - and slick, a shimmering obsidian coating it all and reflecting light that doesn't even exist in this dimension. You move, carrying Aradia in your arms._

>   
>  _"Nice ship. You captain?"_   
> 

>   
>  _"Just XO."_   
> 

>   
>  _"Slacker."_   
> 

>   
>  _He pops his helmet as soon as you're within. The temporal shadows of the crew scatter across the halls. John gives you his best concerned look, and man is it good. Kid's a master at those. "Who is she?"_   
> 

>   
>  _"Aradia Megido. Top level psychic, apparently a necromancer, and I think I love her. Although there's also a stoned/psycho murderclown who's probably just realizing I'm not there for him. And my Legislacerator kismesis, who might be Karkat's actually." You shrug. "Shit's complicated, you know?"_   
> 

>   
>  _John smiles, the patient happy one. "Yeah, I know. She's… dying, huh?" He only lets you open your mouth before preempting you. "Not if you have anything to say about it."_   
> 

>   
>  _"Exactly that."_   
> 

>   
> _You drop time out of the equation, and you're_ **there** _, on the ship and you feel all of you fall back into reality, fully aware you look like a troll carrying another troll on an Earthfleet ship._

>   
>  _That might be a problem, but it's just a pebble in the path of John Egbert, friend-leader supreme. "This is Commander Egbert. Lt. Commander Zahhak and on-duty xenomed to the fore airlock, emergency. Captain, take us to Fleming Station at maximum safe speed, we need an Alternian Cooperative Division med-team with R10 clearance standing by when we dock."_   
> 

>   
> _You manage to look up from her to meet his eyes. You don't have to say_ thank you _, and he doesn't have to say_ any time.  
> 

You pop the switch and the messuit exoskeleton falls off. Your legs are back to normal, or close enough to it - you've pretty much been eating an entire bison each day and running a hundred fifty kilometers. You walk up to your gene-donor and part-time caretaker/mother. "I'm out of patience and I was never the calmest kid even as a human. Please. Roxy. Mom. _How is she?_ "

She doesn't say anything, but she taps a few commands into her wristpad, and your implants light up with your HUD:   
 **Dave Strider, Commander - Earthfleet, Senior Agent, Probational - HCI. Clearance I10.**

Your neural implants fly through the hospital's systems, and you grab every single thing you can find related to Aradia Megido.

You stop at a report that doesn't even have her name until the end. But _Intentional Telomere Alteration in Alternians, Dr. Rose Lalonde and Dr. Roxy Lalonde_ is a pretty fucking catchy title. You scan it, skim it, and hone in on the experimental data.

"It's _**fucking intentional**_?" You know you're shouting at your gene-mother from two meters away but you can't help it. And she doesn't seem to give a shit anyway.

"That's the hypothesis the data supports." Ugh. She slurs worse than your thickest Texas drawl when she's drunk, and she doesn't even have to. You know she can function almost exactly as well as when she'a sober.

Sample size of 598 trolls, carnelian through a few teals and ceruleans, plus the outlier of outliers. You have to laugh. "Fucking… fucking tailor-made retrovirals for each caste to set their fucking lifespan? And Karkat, for his horrible sin of being a mutant… doesn't even fucking have one. I goddamn love it. What's his lifespan without it?"

"Hard to say. Judging by his own telomere degradation, baseline human."

"Hah. Poor bastard, another bit of _homo sapiens_ to taunt him with. So. She's not dying. _They're_ fucking killing her! Treatment?"

She sips from a small pocket flask. "We reverse-engineered a countervirus to eat the original. Given regular telomerase stimulation, she could see as much life expansion as humans do."

"So another seventy years or so. Well, eighty, as a woman."

"That would be the case."

"Would." You tense up. Lalondes always pick their words perfectly, even if said words are a little unintelligible.

"She's lost too much viable DNA, Dave. Even with telomerase her cellular replication is going to be fatal, sooner rather than later. We were too late."

You aren't looking at you, aren't looking at Roxy, aren't looking at anything but through the wall where you know she's dying. Too late. Too late? _**TOO LATE?!**_

We'll fucking see about that.

Your skin goes from ash to charcoal, sinks past obsidian and begins to eat the light. The shadows that grow around you writhe and twitch, crackling bursts at their edges where linearity is rewritten. You push.

In a temporality before this station was built you walk through the void of space, then jump back into Fleming Station in her room. Doctors move aside in slow motion or rapid-speed, but they have nothing to dodge. Every single tendril of darkness dripping from your shadows touches her. You put your hands on her shoulders and

### You Make Things Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whether or not telomeres (the strands of junk DNA at the end of chromosomes that act as a buffer against lost GACT pairs during cellular reproduction, and gradually decay in humans over time until the clipping affects legitimately useful DNA) are actually the main cause of bodily degradation via age is heavily debated, with some non-human species displaying entirely different telomere trends as they age (non-associated or even telomere growth).
> 
> But it's a fun theory and good enough for sci-fi fanfic!
> 
> See commentary below for a correction from someone who knows more about it than me. Thanks, Nornagest!


	2. The (In)Human Condition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hardest part of sci-fi to write about: stuff that actually happened.
> 
> Dave/Aradia World Tour 2414: Showing up at all your favorite massacres and monuments of the last ten thousand years.

For a change, she wakes you up. You start in the lounge chair, almost jumping in Fleming Station's 0.6 _g_ , but the 90 kg of troll in your lap prevents that. So you scramble to get your arms around her. She leans back into your chest and you can feel her relax.

"Should you really be up now, babe?" you murmur in her ear, a maneuver that involves a little horn-dodging.

"I have absolutely no idea," she sighs happily.

"Are they gone?"

"No. It's… different. I don't think they want to admit I'm alive, but I can make them. I still have power, but not knowledge. Not _that_ knowledge." You always thought knowing when she'd die was dragging Aradia down. Now you know it. (Not being forced to kill herself painfully by using telekinesis in a carcinogenic mine shaft probably helps her attitude too)

The calm stayed. Only now she's a giddy kind of calm, cheerful and still thrilled at the sheer range of possibilities in front of her.

"So." Uh oh. Serious voice. "How much trouble are you in?"

You smirk and laugh that one off. "Come on, Ara, I'm Dave Strider. Trouble slides off me like water off oil."

She laughs off your dismissal. "Dave Strider, you _rewound time_ for me. You can't convince me that doesn't have some people very, very afraid."

"Maybe. But there's only one body controlling this whole war from the top-down, and it's half made up of John's family and Karkat's allies. All I had to do was play up my testimony as the loyal agent exposed to unknown forces and baffled at his capabilities."

"Are you?"

"Not as much as I made it look. You're part of it too, you know. You were always one of the timelost, like me. And you were with me for the infinite null-time we were there. They whispered into your dreams. I think you'll start remembering it."

She's quiet, thoughtful. "Timelost." She doesn't ask about it, just rolls it around in her head.

"Cut from the wrong strand. Inverted, disconnected. Seeing time and bending it. I think-" You pause, and run grey fingers through ivory hair. "No, I'm pretty damn sure we were both born with a little bit of _outside_ in us." It's almost enough to make you feel unique. Important. Purposeful.

Or maybe that's her. Aradia slips off your lap, into an adjacent chair. "I'm not new to power, Dave. Or uniqueness. I am new to ignorance. What do we do now?"

 

That one, you have some time to think on. You wait to both get discharged, then start abusing the hell out of your promotions. First thing is grabbing the fastest HCI pinnace on-station, second is getting Aradia Megido granted asylum - easy, under the Gliese Military Citizenship Act that Stelcom passed to account for Karkat and Equius - and status as a high-value Human Coalition Intelligence asset responsible only to you - slightly trickier, but you have a substantial amount of hero credit, experience credit, and supernatural miracle credit. That backs you up enough to get a direct line to Director English.

DS: sir im taking a couple weeks vacation to show my alien girlfriend telekinetic around earth  
DS: and not a single goddamn person in hci or the fleet is going to fuck with her for any goddamn reason ever including the fucking war and youre going to authorize that  
DS: thats really all there is to say on the matter  
JE: Damn fucking straight old boy. The order is SIGNED!

You knew there was a reason Jade's grandpa was your favorite group-parent.

Okay. Time to blow this joint.

 

You land the pinnace 80 km outside Taos Pueblo and hike your way in. You both have about the same taste in casual-wear. At least when it comes to "stuff to wear while hiking across a desert to a fifteen hundred year old historical site so your girlfriend can speak with ghosts" clothes. You think a tank top and cargo pants look better on her, she thinks the same about you.

You say she's overdoing it with the fedora and the bullwhip, but she insists your Stetson is less than purely ironic, and demands a hoofbeast for maximum effect, so, bluff called.

You're both having the fucking time of your lives. You sleep outside in the desert the first night, watching the stars and deciding how old the light from each one is. You both guess identically for every star, and you don't bother looking it up in your implant. You know it, like you know exactly how long till sunrise, like you know how many days ago that cactus sprouted, that bat was born, that stone pillar formed. Like you know how crazy it was to come out here at night with nothing but the clothes on your backs.

Like you know there's one very effective method for generating body heat via physical exertion.

Turns out freaky alien genitalia can be fun even when both parties are the alien.

Days pass. You camp outside Taos, make day trips in, or night trips, bouncing around on an erratic schedule based on whim alone. 

Aradia speaks with the dead, and you watch. Other tourists stay away from you, the troll and the obsidian-skinned man. You revert to grey matching her when you latch back on to this time, but you do that rarely. It's more interesting to see what she sees, even if the dead avoid you as much as the living. They fear Aradia too, but they can understand her, and they are lonely. You take it philosophically. Even if your Spanish wasn't lousy as hell, most of these people died five centuries before the conquistadors came.

Besides, she's so damn _thrilled_. You could get used to being Contented Dave. Even if you are apparently permanently grim, and of a dark nature.

You don't pull punches, though. Dave Strider has spent enough time as a troll to see just about every weakness and ugly cruelty of their species, and enough time with John Egbert to have an idea about the evils of his own species. So you stop at New Echota, Southampton County, Ludlow, Dachau, Volgograd, Équateur Province, Myall Creek. You give Aradia context when she needs it, but the dead have no reason to lie, and she sees the masks behind which hatred has hid over thousands of years.

You encounter a few more people doing this, of course. In Georgia you tug a synthleather jacket on over your tank top and spook off a couple would-be xenophobe kids with a glare and the shadow of time. In Germany a news crew works up the nerve to approach you, and you tell them about Aradia and talking to the dead for half an hour - then flash your HCI ident and suggest they talk to their HCC National to find out who, exactly, they're cleared to show the interview to. Aradia calls you out on that stunt, but you blame John's evil influence for your inclination to fuck with people. Everywhere you go, you go to local bars and diners - whatever variety they are, you know where your kind of people like to hang out, and spend plenty of time in dives. You have authentic bratwurst and borscht, drink with Kongolese kids you tell troll myths to, and a Kamilaroi man with skin nearly the same color as yours when you're uncoupled from time, who drinks only water and tells you about the unglamorous history of his people with alcoholism, and about the Dreamtime.

Of course, after that you don't need to look beyond Aradia's eyes to know you're going to spend a week in the heart of Australia. And you know going in that there are greater powers out there, vast things that care little for humankind or trollkind alike, that had nothing to do with your creation.

A week later you walk the songlines out of the desert (you thought about remixing the songs, and seeing if you too could sing things into existence. You decided against it) and somehow you have a sense of place and purpose again. You mix beats inspired by a score of people you've met, dead and alive, while Aradia writes in a paper journal, then pull off your headset. "I got this weird feeling, Ara."

"Optimism? Understanding? Knowledge?" She smiles while she teases, of course. You really don't think you've seen her expression any worse than intently interested, even when she's listening to massacres in 1943, 1838, or 2057. You can't decide if she's still riding the death-defying rush or if she's just floating now that she's not weighed down with her own demise.

"Solidarity. I think I owe it to my hairless apes to show you the other side."

You start with Stonehenge. She speaks with the Amesbury Archer and the builders, and smiles mysteriously. The architects and craftsmen that laid down the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur make her laugh. She writes down everything a Mongol warrior tells her about their western conquests, even the parts he admits to be making up. A West Virginia coal miner teaches her a lost Springsteen song, which you record her singing. Unexpectedly, you keep that private. The world can have the rest of your art. This is between the two of you.

You park in Earth orbit for a day or two, spend a little while EVA drifting in the void, going to Mars, Io, Ganymede, Derse Labs to visit Rose and Jade, both of whom get along with Aradia like an irradiated time-traveling house on fire that's getting therapy.

Then you both get serious, taking the pinnace on a very slow route back to Fleming Station. You discuss quadrants and the vastly more confusing intricacies of human relationships (continuous beats discrete for complexity every time). And Dave Strider, for the second time in his life, agrees to take the hard road and be monogamous. You think it's worth it.

Next topic of conversation: "So!" Aradia begins the next morning. "Let's go see the Horrorterrors."

You just nod. Yeah, that sounds easy enough.

You could get a Ring Drive, but even with Director English's authorization, that'd draw way too much attention. So she sits lotus-style, you lie down and lay your head in her lap, and you _make_ **time _yours_**.

### Were you ready for this?

"Yeah," you drawl direct to the ten thousand eyes. You feel _wrong wrong out of place_ crawling over you, and even with an infinite infinitesimal time spent with that feeling while you held her here, you're not used to it. How could you be - how could anyone? "I had a great vacation, got asked to be a fantastic gal's matesprit, saw into the dark and bright histories of my species, and found where my home is."

### You don't belong here, Dave.

 _Hah_. Hah! You _knew_ it. They're not omniscient - or they're _too_ omniscient. You could be thinking any one of a million things right now, so they have to try and read you. And that's a _learned_ skill. They can change. They're not eternal. You suddenly understand absolutely everything. "Nah. Wasn't planning on it. Home is wherever the fuck I am. I'm carrying my species with me, all the thousands of years of us. I came here to talk about you."

### What do you have to say, Dave?

"Alien isn't evil. Or good. It's just different. So why the help? Why the love for what you can't touch?"

### You create us.

Okay. _Slightly_ less sure of yourself now. All things considered you were pretty sure it was the other way round. And past tense.

Aradia speaks up. "You don't see time as we do."

### No. Not as either of your species do, not as you two alone do.

"So who creates who?"

### It is a simultaneous and endless cycle. To create is to be created. To be is to bring into being.

"You're our… antithesis?" You suddenly know absolutely nothing.

### We are your siblings. Birthed from thought. Your worlds make your forms. Our forms make our reality. We bind each other.

"For that, you love us?"

### For your existence we love you. Why should we not? For your infinite existence we envy you. And so we cannot touch you.

" _Our_ infinite existence?"

### You can form in all possibilities. We iterate but once, across them all.

You suddenly think you kind of sort of get it? "You can touch our world, though. You form our terrors, troll and human alike."

### You can touch ours. You were born with your gift, Dave. To come to us. To your Alternia we were bound, as to many others. We have no control over this.

"I brought us here." It's not a question, and they're sharp enough not to answer. "Then we can find our way out. What do you think, Ara, can we get to the Imperial Condescension's battleship first go?"

"Let's give it a try," she says with a grin, and flat human-like teeth do nothing to make it less predatory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Fun Facts about Earth!**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> New Echota, Georgia: Capital of the Cherokee Nation until their forced removal to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears, 1838. 4,000 of the 15,000 expelled Cherokee died on the way. 
> 
> Southampton County, 1831: Nat Turner's slave rebellion lasts two days before being crushed. 50-60 killed by the rebels; in reprisal, 56 state executions, 100-200 vigilante killings.
> 
> Ludlow, Colorado: 1914, Colorado National Guard attack striking coal miners and their families. 19-25 killed, including women and children.
> 
> Dachau, Germany: You should know this one. 1933-1945, 32,000 killed.
> 
> Volgograd: Known as Stalingrad during the infamous battle from 1942-1943. Almost 2,000,000 casualties from both sides combined.
> 
> Équateur Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo: During the Congo Free State, 1885-1908 , Leopold II's rubber harvesting policies required severed hands for low quotas, and a hand for each bullet fired by his soldiers. Hands became a defacto currency of life, and villages would even conduct raids on other villages to obtain hands to meet impossible quotas. Estimates suggest up to 80% of the population may have died.
> 
> Myall Creek, Australia: 1838. Weraerai people of the Kamilaroli tribe, camped at the Myall Creek station, are massacred by a group of herdsmen including the man who invited them to stay at the station for protection. The first massacre of Aboriginal Australians for which whites were legally punished. 28 dead, mostly old, young, and women.
> 
>  
> 
> Stonehenge was likely built in three distinct periods of construction ranging from around 5000-2500 BCE before its abandonment. The Amesbury Archer buried nearby is thought to have been born in the Alps and travelled all across Europe to the henge before his death at 40.
> 
> It's very unlikely slaves built the Egyptian pyramids. Uncovered worker barracks near the pyramids at Giza are of good quality and bear graffiti with the ancient Egyptian equivalent of "Kilroy was here", along with boasts and normal bragging.  
> The Bent Pyramid is the result of an architectural mistake being discovered halfway through building, and was probably pretty damn comical when it happened.
> 
> Mongol hordes were an interesting mix of modern modes of "morality". They were completely unconcerned with crushing local cultures or traditions, and in some cases actually integrated very well (see: the Yuan Dynasty of China). On the other hand, they made very, very genocidal examples of people that did not surrender.
> 
> Bruce Springsteen is and will forever remain The Boss.


End file.
